Exploring Indie Science Fiction Games: An Exercise (20 pts)
Science fiction has been theorized as a thinking experiment, as a challenge to the reader. Science fiction games, designed to be interactive narratives, may expand what we as gamers and experimenters can test and explore in a controlled setting. Let’s explore that a little by playing a game and taking some notes about the process.
Choose a game from this collection from itch.io. Download it on your computer and give yourself at minimum two hours to explore it and get a sense of how it works. You do not have to solve or complete the game for our purposes with this assignment, but you do need to take time to observe, reflect, and take some notes as you are playing.
Take notes on the following:
- What strange novum is this game narrative exploring? Or, what is the what-if? question this game is exploring?
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What setting details help to immerse you in a secondary world?
- What kind(s) of character(s) are you invited to control? Are you invited to be multiple characters?
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How do you get to know the character(s) you are playing? What details make them distinctive, quirky, memorable, etc?
- What kinds of interactions do you have with NPC characters?
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How are you challenged as a game player in this game? What are you being asked to investigate, where do you get stuck, and how do you make progress in the game?
- Where (if ever) do you see the game comment on itself in a “meta” way as a fictional, constructed system (as a game)?
- Where and how do you see the game respond to or comment on our reality? Or what cultural issues from our world do you see reflected in this game?
You may word-process your notes or handwrite them on paper as you’re playing, however is convenient and readable. The goal is to bring these to class with you, as these notes document your doing the reading for our last week. (You will be turning these in during class, perhaps with some modifications from our class discussion in the last week.) Your game analysis notes count toward your total class exercise points for the semester.